


Until the Stars Fall

by saltwaterselkie



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Immortals, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Strangers to Lovers, Tenderness, andromaquynh, canon compliant BUT ONLY UP TIL QUYNH GOES DOWN, ish?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwaterselkie/pseuds/saltwaterselkie
Summary: The story of the Old Guard, told in firsts (first meetings, first kisses, first deaths)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Lykon, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Quynh | Noriko & Lykon
Comments: 104
Kudos: 214





	1. The Rose in the Desert

**Author's Note:**

> As of this chapter, it's mostly Quynh/Andy. As the fic goes on, expect plenty of the other characters we know and love to join the party, too :)

Andromache the Scythian had come to terms with the fact that she was the only one of her kind.

It had been easy to assume so, back when she fought for her people and only her people. Back when she was worshipped as a goddess, back when she was a whirl of death dealt out to all but herself, a blade honed to kill.

She was still a blade honed to kill. That had not changed. The only thing that _had_ was the fact that the perks of being a goddess had slowly been outweighed by Andromache’s desire to seek out more of her own kind. She had humbled, if it could be said; after seeing so many of her own struck down, a hunger in her had grown for someone she could fight beside without fearing their friendship was to be ripped from her too soon. Too many friendships had already been ripped from Andromache too soon.

So she had left the Scythians with a story, a legend, and struck out on her own path. A roving knight, doing as much as she could to help the innocent she encountered while inquiring subtly about anyone they might have seen who healed quickly, fought riskily, lived through many a fight with terrible odds.

She hoped. As she bartered her way across continents and down long roads, her blade always at her back – the handle of the ax crossing her spine – she thought that no odds were this slim. There was no way she was the _only_ one. Not out of the thousands of people she had met, the thousands she had yet to meet.

The years slipped by. Andromache stopped only in particularly beautiful places, and then only for a week or two before moving on. Nowhere was there a legend of a being like her. So slowly, slowly, Andromache gave up her search.

Ostensibly, she still traveled and asked her questions, hoping that someday, someone would have an answer that suited her. But she no longer did her best to touch every coastline, set foot in every city. She had been alive long enough, regardless, to know that any place she visited might not be there a century later, and dozens of villages and encampments might pop up in her wake only decades after she passed.

She fought hard, and slept deeply, until her nights were as routine as her days. Companionless, for Andromache had lost too many by then to invite more memories into her mind of laughs and faces and nights shared by the fire. Memories that would, inevitably, fade and be dulled from time.

Simply because she was immortal did not mean she could not forget.

<><><>

It was a night like any other, and she had already lived for centuries before she lay her head on her bedroll on this particular evening.

But when she closed her eyes, she dreamt.

She had never dreamt anything like this; never something so vivid that it threatened to rip her out of her own reality and into someone else’s. Threatened and then _did._

She staggered through a desert. Someone was chasing her; she knew this. A bow on her back; a quiver that must’ve been empty, it was so light; and a head covering to protect her from the punishing sun. It came in disorienting flashes, flinging Andromache back and forth between cool forest and burning sands, between trees blocking off the night sky and an achingly cloudless day.

She glanced up as her feet scuffed through sand and caught a glimpse of a mountain range, then turned her head and saw her hunter. A distant figure, but she could feel the dread the sight of him brought. Her ribs throbbed. Andromache did not know why. Determined, she turned away from the mountains and towards the center of the desert, where she knew (hoped) he would not follow.

When Andromache finally shivered out of her fugue, skin still boiling with the ghost of a sun, she realized two vital facts.

The first was that she needed to find the person she’d dreamt of, if such a person existed. Not once in her long, long lifetime had she dreamt like this. It had to _mean_ something. It had to have purpose. She needed to search out the traveler, no matter how long it took. The archer.

The second was that she knew where the archer was.

<><><>

A little more than a month later, Andromache summited the mountain range. The dreams had not stopped; if anything, they’d simply grown more vivid. They called to her soul.

She had dreamt of the long chase through the desert. She had seen the archer’s dogged determination. The closer she grew, the more vivid her dreams became. Where once they had been built of flashes, now Andromache dwelt for minutes on end in a place not her own.

A few days ago, the hunter had reached the archer. When Andromache dreamt of it her breath caught in her throat, because she knew just how the archer was equipped, and there were scant weapons indeed looped over her shoulders. A bow and an empty quiver. A knife tucked into her boot.

Her pursuer, on the other hand, was armed to the teeth. He had obviously come prepared. Andromache was the archer as she set her feet and drew her dagger, turning towards the man with a growl. Waiting.

He was too close now to run.

This close, Andromache recognized that the man was from the east. He snarled at the archer, his eyebrows knitting downward.

The man dropped his pack. She saw two shortswords form an X at his back, but he didn’t reach for them. Instead, quick as a wraith, he drew a throwing knife and whipped it at the archer.

Moving so quickly it surprised _Andromache_ , who was practically inhabiting the archer’s body at this point, the archer moved to the side, raised a hand, and caught the knife by the hilt.

Andromache thought that she might be a little in love.

The battle was swift after that. Andromache only caught flashes; two knives against two swords was not an agreeable situation, but the archer held her own.

Until his blade finally came crashing down on the archer as the metal of the throwing knife she used to block his blow cracked under his weight.

Andromache was pulled out of the image as sharply as she had entered it, her breath still in her lungs. After all this time, the universe had finally given her a sign. And she hadn’t been quick enough. Whatever the archer was supposed to have told her, there was no hope of it now. Perhaps, Andromache thought, the archer was carrying something with her that Andromache was supposed to find. Perhaps that was the purpose of the dreams. So Andromache continued towards the mountain range, towards the blistering sands that awaited her.

And then she dreamt of the archer _again_ , and she knew.

<><><>

When Andromache crested the next dune and saw the figure collapsed below her, she almost didn’t believe it. She’d found the body of the man, the shard of his own throwing knife still embedded in his throat, a full two days ago. The waterskins in his packs had disappeared. Andromache knew who had taken them.

Apparently, the water and the adrenaline had both run out.

Andromache tugged her kerchief upward to better protect her face from the stinging sand – a breeze had just kicked up – and descended. As she approached the figure, her vision confirmed what she already knew: though the person was not facedown, they lay awkwardly on the bulge of the bow and quiver Andromache could see at their back. The archer.

The archer did not move.

Andromache reached the lump of cloth and flesh in a few minutes more. She knelt down beside the archer. _A woman_. Andromache had thought so, but she hadn’t been certain. The woman was from the east, like the man; her lips were cracked, her face burnt. Still lovely, in a way that called to mind a good blade or a straight arrow rather than the delicate sensibilities of a noblewoman. And practically desiccated from lack of water.

The archer shuddered and died.

And then the archer shuddered and woke again.

<><><>

The archer’s name was Quynh.

The last time Andromache had come this far to the east was too long ago; she tripped over words in the woman’s language that she was sure were not only spoken with a clumsy tongue, but pulled from an antiquated lexicon. The woman had been guarded when she’d regained full consciousness, despite the fact that Andromache had been the one to provide water to her, until Andromache matter-of-factly stabbed herself in the stomach and gritted her teeth through the pain as the wound healed.

Quynh’s eyes widened. “Like me,” she said simply, her voice cracking. (Andromache didn’t know whether it was surprise or simply a long-parched throat.)

“Yes,” Andromache replied, “like you.”

<><><>

It was good fortune indeed that Quynh was agreeable to be around. Andromache learned this quickly as they both gained a foothold in each other’s languages, trading jokes and stories across fires built to warm two. Andromache was slow in getting used to Quynh’s dialect; she had always been better with the languages of steel, not of tongues.

Not that Quynh was unfamiliar with the language of steel herself. While Andromache soon learned that she preferred her bow and arrows, Quynh’s skill with a knife nearly challenged Andromache’s. Given time, Andromache thought, it would certainly prove difficult to defeat Quynh in their miniature challenges; they sparred for practice with each other often.

Andromache was by far the more experienced. She learned in short order that Quynh had lived a short twenty-seven years before being cut down and rising again; the two of them determined that Quynh had been killed for the first time just as Andromache’s dreams began. Quynh revealed that she had dreamed of Andromache, too – though she had thought herself mad and accursed, not a new immortal with visions of another.

They began to roam the world together. Side by side. Andromache found that, though she never realized she had done it, her heart had been shielded from others for decades. It was difficult to let herself care to the deepest extent when she knew that an unanticipated raid, a disease in the water supply, or even a few more years could tear the people she knew from her.

With Quynh… it was different.

They had been riding together for ten years by the time Andromache realized she had allowed herself to become complacent. To know – not just to believe, logically, but to _know_ – that Quynh was not going to leave her.

She still wasn’t sure that Quynh would never want to.

<><><>

Quynh liked to wear red.

Andromache preferred earth tones; deep browns and tanned leathers, natural colors that let her blend in with the world around her before she distinguished herself with her ax or sword. She did not mind being seen, but she _did_ mind being ostentatious, and she always felt herself to fall into that trap when she wore bright garments.

Quynh, however, never looked ostentatious, no matter how deep the reds or brilliant the ochres she favored. She simply looked crisp as an autumn leaf. Brilliant. Fiery.

The colors she liked brought out the brown of her eyes.

It was after a long and drawn-out fight to save a child bride from an unfit suitor that Andromache realized how she had grown to expect Quynh’s company by the fire. No, not just to expect – to _love_.

“Did you see me today?” Quynh asked, a smile pushing its way onto her face. “When I got run through.”

Andromache _had_ seen her. She used to wince every time Quynh was wounded – or “killed” – thinking that perhaps one time it would stick. Now, Andromache preferred not to see the wounds be dealt because she didn’t like the idea of Quynh hurting.

Not that she didn’t think Quynh strong enough to undergo such pain and come out laughing on the other end. Not now that she knew her.

“The spear was twice as long as you are,” Andromache teased.

“It pierced me here,” Quynh said, pointing to her stomach. “Right through my scar. As if it knew where to go!”

They had found early on in their companionship that the scars of their childhood had not disappeared with the coming of their immortality. Quynh’s had been obvious; a ragged white line pierced her midriff where she had burnt herself as a child. Andromache, on the other hand, had not known she _had_ any scars until Quynh caught a glimpse of one between her shoulder blades.

Andromache had not remembered where it had come from, though she knew she must’ve earned it in the brief years of her earliest lifetime. None she knew had ever seen cause to point it out to her. None but Quynh.

It was a simple moment. Quynh’s hand reached out for the waterskin. Andromache was already extending it.

That was when Andromache understood. That they were meant to be paired, two of a whole. That by now, she knew Quynh’s idiosyncrasies better than she knew her own. Knew enough to hold out the water before Quynh herself asked for a drink.

Quynh took the waterskin. Andromache didn’t let go.

Their gazes met in the firelight, and the corner of Quynh’s lips quirked up. A smile again. This time, not full of mirth; this time, a challenge. “Andromache,” Quynh said, her voice low as their hands brushed, “you tease.”

“I have never teased so much as you,” Andromache replied smoothly, shifting infinitesimally closer to Quynh.

Neither one of them was the type to wait for what they wanted, but Andromache realized at once that she _hadn’t_ wanted to. Not when Quynh was only a few decades into immortality. Not when Andromache could still feel the youthful newness of forever shining out of her face. Now they were matched. Quynh old enough to understand fully. As Andromache did. And old enough to want what she wanted, too.

“No,” Quynh said, her voice soft as she leaned forward, “you haven’t.”

The kiss was everything the two of them in a fight _weren’t_. Slow. Sweet. Savored over moments that seemed to last forever as Andromache drew Quynh close, because she had _finally_ decided that this was what it was going to be. The two of them.

They were immortals. They had all the time in the world. Which meant it was quite a while before Quynh drew back, resting her forehead against Andromache’s as her fingers tangled in Andromache’s hair.

“Just you and me,” Quynh said, and it was a promise.

“Until the end,” Andromache said, and it was an oath.

“ _Yes_ ,” Quynh whispered, the both of them knowing the wry humor of the thought of _the end_ for people like them. And they sat there sharing in each other’s breaths for a few moments more, the fire now a heap of glowing embers beside them.

Quynh looked up, and her eyes on Andromache’s were as dark as the night sky and just as beautiful. “Yes,” she repeated, “until the stars fall.”


	2. The Warrior of the Spear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for another immortal appearance...

Andromache didn’t often dream – or, at the very least, _remember_ her dreams. Usually when she slept, muscles tired from a day of roaming or fighting or loving with Quynh, the two of them wrapped up in each other under the eaves of their tent, she didn’t wake with strange, fresh falsities in her mind. That was one of the reasons her first dreams about Quynh had stood out to her. Dreams she’d remembered consistently for days on end were bound to catch her attention, even if the dreams themselves hadn’t been so intense.

It was night, and it was winter, when another dream came.

Andromache was wrapped in a bear fur and curled around Quynh. The two of them had been making their way through the far north, taking a trader’s boat west across the ocean on a whim to find themselves in a new world of snow and dark green forests. They had found many of these lands to be isolated, though they’d met a few peoples with languages Quynh was eager to pick up.

They were staying with one of those tribes now. A kind woman had offered to let them share her fire and her meals, though Quynh had insisted in what she had picked up of their tongue that she and Andromache would hunt to aid the community. It was the least they could do, especially after being offered such hospitality.

So the day had been spent tracking and taking down a deer. Despite the fact that Quynh’s arrows were more often put to the test on men than animals, her aim was true as ever; she took the doe with a single shot from more than a hundred paces away.

Andromache thought that perhaps it would take a dozen more centuries for Quynh to cease impressing her.

So it was that with full stomachs and good companionship, Andromache and Quynh had slipped into sleep.

The dream was vivid and _hot_. Andromache was someplace warm; she fought in the heat of a battle, her spear slicing true through the air. Her arms were a rich, dark brown, corded with muscle. As her weapon sliced into an opponent, a curved sword split her skin from behind, cleaving her heart in two.

And her skin knitted together again.

Andromache startled awake, the dream there like a word on the tip of her tongue. “ _Quynh_ ,” she whispered in the darkness, “ _Quynh, you saw.”_

“ _Yes,”_ Quynh replied. “ _Another.”_

<><><>

The dreams were insistent, coming nearly every time they closed their eyes. They discovered, after a time, that they did not dream of the man – they were sure it was a man, by the facts they ascertained between them – unless they were both asleep at the same time. A useful fact to know.

As far as they could tell, he was on another continent – it took them the better part of three decades to get back across the sea. When they did, they welcomed another surprise: a Greek warrior had taken the “world” (or, at least, what of the world he knew) by storm.

“I don’t think he is fighting with this upstart Alexander,” Quynh argued one night over a fire. “We should find him, not intervene with this squabble.”

“True,” Andromache agreed, “but neither of us finds ease in avoiding a fight.” She grinned. “Not when we can help in one, anyway.”

There were all too many fights to join in, as it turned out; they took a detour away from a straight path south, dipping instead towards the battles being fought by the Macedonian. They didn’t intervene on his side of the conflict; instead, they stepped in in the aftermath. Too many soldiers thought they could take liberties with the people they had conquered.

Andromache and Quynh did not take kindly to those attitudes. They made sure legends spread and warriors thought twice before taking defeated citizens as their own.

“Do you notice the dreams changing?” Quynh asked, sharpening an obsidian arrowhead (she still preferred to make her own after all this time; she swore that nothing else flew so true.)

“Yes,” Andromache agreed, “the surroundings have shifted.”

“I think,” Quynh said pensively, “that he is coming to us.”

“Well, then, he must be much more cooperative than you were.”

Quynh shot Andromache a reproachful glare. “Forgive me, I was only busy _dying in the desert_ while the man who killed me the first time tried to do it again.”

“He succeeded,” Andromache reminded her, a gentle tease.

Quynh grumbled out a complaint that Andromache stopped with a kiss, and the night unspooled into something quite pleasant from there. Needless to say, it was a while before they had another dream.

<><><>

Quynh had been right, as Quynh so often was. The man had found them.

They didn’t realize it, at first. They were fighting in a small skirmish on the side of a besieged village, their movements so in sync that they took down fighters as if they were an army in and of themselves, not just two very capable immortal women.

And then another spun into their midst, and Andromache’s eyes widened as she saw the spear he wielded and recognized what it meant.

He fought on their side; with his spear and Quynh’s bow and Andromache’s beloved labrys, the fight was over before the other side knew what had transpired.

They stood there together, breathing hard, in the mess of bodies, and sized each other up.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark skin and near-black eyes. He wielded his spear with natural ease; in the fight, he had flipped it and fought with it like it was an extension of his body. Like Quynh; like Andromache.

Andromache considered for the first time that immortality might be a warrior’s gift. That, after all, seemed to be one of the qualities that she and Quynh shared with this man. Two fighters gaining the gift was no concrete evidence; three might be more than a coincidence.

“I know you,” the man said in sharp, quick-spoken Greek. (Or… something like Greek. Close enough that Andromache could understand it, a relief she was slightly ashamed of.) “Your faces. I see you through each other’s eyes in the dreams.” He looked almost surprised that he had finally found them in person; his eyes tracked up and down their faces like he was comparing them with the flashes of memories he’d received.

“And we know you,” Quynh said. She smiled mischievously. “You got stabbed in the back.”

The man grinned. “And many other places. I returned the favor.”

That was when Andromache knew that he would fit with her and Quynh. A third. “Andromache the Scythian,” she said, giving him a small bow.

“Quynh,” Quynh added, tossing her head with a self-satisfied smirk.

“I’m Lykon,” the man said. “I look forward to traveling with companions who I assume have been stabbed just as much as I have.”

“More,” Quynh cut in, pointing at Andromache. “Especially her. Much more. She should be crowned Queen of being stabbed.”

Lykon laughed. “I look forward to the many stories I am sure you have to share,” he said, his eyes twinkling at Andromache.

“We wouldn’t dare disappoint you,” Andromache replied, pulling a cloth from her pack to wipe down her ax. “After all,” her gaze flicked up to his, and she honored him with a smile, “it’s not every day you meet another immortal.”

<><><>

The dreams stopped. Lykon didn’t.

No, it seemed that he found it far easier to fill silence with chatter than to leave it alone. It would have been unbearable if his thoughts weren’t so _interesting_. Lykon was a born storyteller; he twisted tales out of battles and spread them around encampments with an ease that Andromache envied. Not to mention that he was just as gifted with languages a Quynh. Andromache couldn’t count the number of times she’d wished that immortality came with automatic translation.

Despite his constant dialogue, Lykon seemed to know exactly when it was too much for Andromache and Quynh – _and_ when they needed space to themselves. He adapted to their relationship with ease. “I knew since the dreams began,” he explained. “From the way you looked at each other.”

Andromache shot him a glance. They were drinking in a small building with musty shelves and simple seating; Quynh had gone to destroy the competition in a local archery match. They’d promised to join her as soon as they were done nursing their drinks. “Is that all right with you, Lykon?”

“Oh, but of course,” Lykon said breezily. “I doubt I’d want a partner even if another available immortal were to appear. I’m not that type of person.” He laughed. He had a hearty laugh; Andromache didn’t think she would ever tire of it. “I’d rather hear a good story than spend a night with a girl. Or a man, for that matter.” He winked at Andromache, flexing an arm. “Though I doubt any self-respecting citizen of the world would turn down _this_ physique.”

Andromache raised an eyebrow and took a long sip of her drink. It had been sweetened with honey; she approved of the choice. She shrugged and nodded in agreement. “A fair assumption. Though I doubt the arrogance would be equivalently entrancing.”

Lykon laughed again. “You say that when you sleep with a woman who is currently crushing the hopes and dreams of the poor little mortal archers she faces.”

“Point taken. Though I would argue that Quynh’s more proud than arrogant.”

He shrugged. “They verge on each other. You find both endearing.”

Andromache ducked her head. That was one thing about Lykon – he could get to the core of her more quickly, sometimes, than even Quynh. He talked so much that she often forgot how much he watched and listened, too.

“Come on,” she grumbled, “let’s go watch her win.”

As it turned out, Quynh _didn’t_ win, which was a surprise to all of them (most of all Quynh herself.) Lykon commented afterwards that the only reason Quynh hadn’t driven her final arrow home as precisely as she usually did was because she’d noticed Andromache watching. And had paid slightly more attention to Andromache than to the shot itself.

And Andromache realized Lykon was right. That night, as she tumbled with Quynh, laughing and teasing her about the loss – because when all was said and done, they were still human, and a thousand years of archery didn’t mean perfection came without focus – Andromache knew that she wouldn’t trade that pride-verging-on-arrogance for anything.

After all, she harbored something similar herself.

Andromache grew used to them. Quynh by her side always, Lykon joining them or drifting slightly apart, but never too far that they couldn’t find each other within a week. It became routine. And Andromache knew that it could always be hers.

That was what made it so terrible when he died.


	3. When Ichor Flowed Like Rain

They spent the day before Lykon died at a river.

It had been many, many years since the conflicts of Alexander the Great had brought the three of them together. Years of laughter and good company, of honorable battles and justice meted out with three pairs of hands, kind but firm. Andromache loved the life she shared almost as much as she loved the people she shared it with.

Loved them in different ways, true – she’d never gotten the urge to take Lykon to bed – but loved them all the same. She wondered if the love of immortals was deeper than that of mortals because of the time one could spend on cultivating it. Perhaps it was as embers to a flame; the former burned long and low, smoldering with the comfort of the eternal, while the latter flashed hot and passionate, all the more precious for its brevity.

At the moment, however, Andromache was thinking no existential thoughts; her mind wasn’t drifting down such avenues. Rather, she was wondering if Quynh was going to pull a move so stupid it would kill her, or if Lykon would die first this time.

The river they had chosen to camp beside for the night moved swiftly and ran deep. It was cradled in the heart of a canyon; a steep cliff bordered one side of it, not yet eroded by the moving water. On the other, the grade was gradual, dipping towards the river in a lazy swoop. Andromache had taken it upon herself (read: she had lost the card game they’d played earlier that day to choose who would have the responsibility) to set up camp while Lykon and Quynh swam.

Or, rather, _dove_. They were scrabbling up the cliff wall, gaining purchase anywhere they could find it – pitiful shrubs growing on the rock face, nicks in the stone, shallow ledges. Andromache didn’t watch them climb, but she watched them dive. Specifically, she watched _Quynh_ dive.

When she and Quynh had first known each other, Quynh had hated the water. Andromache hadn’t pressed, but she surmised from the vague details Quynh provided that a much-loved relative had drowned when Quynh was a child. Even an immortal found difficulty in shrugging off the invisible whispers of childhood trauma.

So Andromache had taught Quynh how to swim. They had started small, finding streams that barely reached to Quynh’s calves. Creeks that ran up to her thighs. Small ponds in which she could immerse herself to the waist. Andromache made it a game; if nothing else, Quynh was competitive.

By the time Quynh could fully immerse herself without panic – by the time she could swim across a lake without fear – Andromache had showed her many more recreational activities one could engage in underwater that didn’t necessarily involve swimming. Quynh was quite good at those, too.

Now, Quynh swam like a fish, and Lykon was even better. The two of them flung themselves off the cliff with reckless abandon time after time, fighting to execute the greater number of flips or twists while they were still in the air.

Andromache paused as she nursed a fire to health to watch Quynh slice through the air, twisting and flipping three or four times before splitting the surface of the water feet-first. She came up for air gasping and laughing, then turned towards shore and waved to Andromache. “Did you see? Andromache! You saw, did you not?”

“Yes, yes, very nice,” Andromache called out. She envied them their antics; she had never been a good diver, but it was a sweltering day, and she would have welcomed the embrace of the water. Ah, well. She could swim after she finished with the fire.

Lykon gave a whoop and jumped next, though he didn’t give himself enough of a buffer distance. Just before he hit the water, he slammed into a boulder jutting out of the bottom of the cliff. Andromache winced as she heard a crack reverberate across the river. Lykon sank into the water, a bloom of his blood spreading.

Seconds later, he was sputtering his way to the surface. “THAT HURT LIKE A BITCH,” he yelled triumphantly.

So it had been Lykon to “die” first. Andromache hid a smile as he tread water, trading jabs back at Quynh for the lighthearted insults she was tossing his way. To be fair, it wasn’t like Quynh hadn’t done the same in the past. Lykon didn’t have a monopoly on ignominious behavior. If Andromache remembered correctly (and she was sure that she did), Quynh had gotten herself thrown off the upper story of a noble’s building just a few months ago for winning a bet with a bad-tempered lord. Needless to say, she had still come back to collect.

Andromache took a break from making dinner to toss off what few outer garments she was still wearing and take a leap into the river. It was just as excruciatingly cold as she’d expected. In a word, it was wonderful.

The three of them sat by the fire once the food was done, soaked and happy. Andromache caught Quynh glancing at her wet underclothes – they did little to hide what was under them. “You’re mooning over me, sweet,” Andromache said pointedly.

“It’s only fair,” Quynh said petulantly. “You’ve been doing the same since we began to eat.”

As this was true, Andromache had no refutation. “I was looking respectfully,” she countered. “ _You_ look at _me_ like you have a personal quarrel with my clothes.”

“I do,” Quynh said, lips quirking. “I want them gone.”

“If I may politely interject and tell you to keep it to the tent?” Lykon raised an eyebrow. “You’re ruining my venison.”

They all laughed at that. (Lykon had a penchant for chuckling at his own jokes.) “It is fortuitous indeed,” Andromache told him, “that you sleep deeply.”

At that, Quynh promptly choked on her meat.

<><><>

The next day dawned sunny and cool. Andromache woke with the rising sun, slipping out from under Quynh’s arm to take her ax to the edge of the river. There, she trained. Quynh knew Andromache had a love affair with her labrys; to this day, Andromache never tired of slicing down invisible enemies with the curved edges of the blade.

She rather enjoyed slicing down _real_ enemies, too, but when none were about, invisible ones had to do.

Lykon woke shortly after her and joined her on the pebbly bank, striking out with his spear sometimes and spinning it in hypnotizing patterns at others.

His weapon was more like Andromache’s than Quynh’s was, but Andromache and Lykon didn’t share the same type of affinity; while they each had a strong connection with their weapon of choice, Lykon saw his spear as an interchangeable friend. It didn’t matter what type of spear he wielded (he had gone through many in the time since Andromache had known him) – in fact, he preferred to switch it up every so often, to keep it interesting, as he put it. He found a new weapon to be a new challenge.

Andromache found his attitude impressive but unappealing. While she could work with nearly any weapon ever invented and had needed to switch out her ax once or twice, she found comfort in the familiar weight of steel she’d known for centuries.

Quynh enjoyed her sleep, but she was up soon enough, loosing arrows into distant targets. Soon, Quynh untied one of their horses, slipping onto it bareback to practice her archery in motion.

This was a routine of theirs. It kept them sharp and happy, too. Once they were finished, they packed up camp with a speed that belied the many times they had done so in concert before. They struck out for the nearest village, where they were planning to subtly inquire about any issues the locals were encountering that they might be suited to address.

They shouldn’t have worried about asking around for trouble. It seemed to find them. Because minutes after they’d entered the town, raiders struck.

<><><>

Andromache loved these types of skirmishes. The ones when she was positive she was battling on the right side. She didn’t have to wonder if she should be intervening, if she was going to be on the wrong side of history for doing so. In _this_ kind of a fight, in which an obvious aggressor charged in full force with little taste for mercy, Andromache invariably found herself reveling in the movements of her ax and her partners (who were weapons in and of themselves.)

She had lived long enough to know that to call a battle a dance was a cliché – and, furthermore, not an accurate one. For most, a battle was _not_ a dance, could not be. It was not choreographed; it might take a mortal a lifetime to master only a few of the “moves.”

But it was not inaccurate to liken the work of Lykon, Quynh, and Andromache of Scythia to a dance. They had had more than a lifetime. Much, much more.

Still no choreography, that was true enough. But each move was perfectly suited to the actions of the opposition preceding it. Andromache’s style at this point was pure efficiency – she drove her bay mare forward and matched each blow struck against her with one of her own. Quynh was perched on a boulder, taking shots and showing off when she knew Andromache glanced her way. Lykon had slipped off his horse and planted himself in the midst of several enemy raiders, weaving in and out of them: a spear against several swords, and yet there wasn’t a nick on him.

A dance indeed.

Andromache finished off her raiders and rode towards the others, her blood singing. “Good hit, Lykon,” Quynh called out, grinning as Lykon executed a fancy combination of footwork that ended with his weapon embedded in an enemy’s gut.

“Thank you,” he called out, giving a little mocking bow among all the enemies he had struck down. They radiated out from him like sunbursts. “I do my—”

The raider he’d just run through had apparently found it in himself to execute one last lunge. He flung himself forward, cracking the shaft of Lykon’s spear with his weight. As he moved, he drew something from his belt; with a scream of anguish, he buried a dagger up to the hilt in Lykon’s stomach.

Andromache laughed. She _laughed_.

Because it was such a futile action. So meaningless, so nonthreatening. The battle was done and, besides, Lykon would be healed in moments and they would be making fun of him for letting an enemy get that close. “Even immortals must grapple with stupidity,” Andromache would say, giving him a friendly nudge of her shoulder.

And then the raider fell. And Lykon fell with him.

Andromache glanced at Quynh, puzzled. Lykon could only be faking; why? Was he going to pull some practical joke if they approached?

Quynh shrugged and vaulted off of her boulder, striding over to Lykon with no tension in her shoulders, no urgency in her step. But… when she got closer to him, she paused and broke into a run, darting across the dusty ground to be at his side.

That wasn’t good. Andromache urged her horse nearer and swung off when she was close enough to see.

“Lykon,” Quynh was saying, “Lykon, stay with me. Lykon, Lykon, _why aren’t you healing?_ ”

Andromache wasn’t aware of the time it took for her to get from a standing position to her knees next to Lykon. All she knew was that blood stained his midriff, spreading in a slow seep through his clothes. The dagger had been yanked out as the raider fell, fingers still clenched around the hilt; Quynh whipped out her own knife in moments and sliced away at the fabric to show the wound.

Andromache wanted to scream that question, same as Quynh. _Why aren’t you healing?_ Her hands moved of their own accord, frantic, finding the edges of the wound (so much bigger than she would’ve expected for a little dagger, just a little dagger) and trying to push them closed. Push them together.

He’d lost so much blood already. They’d _let_ him lose that blood, thinking he was fine. Invincibility became a habit if it was yours for long enough.

Gods, _Andromache_ was thousands of years older than Lykon. _Thousands_. And never once had her healing failed her. Never once had she felt the sharp slice of a blade or crack of her nose without soon feeling the bones align to knit together again, without watching her skin smooth over so the wound became invisible.

Quynh moaned, rocking back on her heels. “ _Lykon_ ,” Andromache said, trying to staunch the bleeding. _“Lykon_.”

She’d killed too many people not to know when someone had been dealt a death blow. But this _shouldn’t_ have been a death blow; at least, not a permanent one. In moments, Lykon’s wound would fix itself. He would sit up and give her that same smile she had come to love, the same boyish grin from when he’d died at the river, and joke about how blips in immortality were better than having to watch her flirt with Quynh.

After centuries together, their names were as easily exchanged as those words that denoted the most basic of needs, because _they_ were all they needed. They could die of plague and be up the next day. They could be stabbed and walk it off. But Lykon, Quynh, Andromache… they would have that forever.

They were _supposed_ to have that forever.

 _No,_ Andromache thought fiercely, Lykon’s chest rising and falling shallowly beneath her hands, his heart beating an uneven tattoo. _You’re ours. Ours until the stars fall._

“Quynh,” Lykon choked out, “Andromache.”

And he died.

<><><>

About a hundred years ago, Quynh, Lykon, and Andromache had encountered an artist who saw more than she let on.

The artist had painted Andromache. Afterwards, she spoke to her. “You three,” she said, “you fit. You,” she tapped Andromache’s sternum, “you are the blue. Your partner is the red. He is the gold. And you hold the whole palette in the colors of your lives together.”

The woman faded away soon after, but her words never did.

<><><>

Quynh keened when Lykon died. Her voice lifted up in a scream of anguish, of disbelief, as his eyes emptied. Andromache just sat, her hands wet with the blood of a former immortal. Quynh sobbed; tears filled Andromache’s eyes and refused to fall. Quynh drew her bow and loosed arrow after arrow into the corpse of the raider who’d killed their friend, their third; Andromache watched and mourned.

The gold was gone.

The first immortal had died.


	4. Jerusalem's Promise

It took Andromache a long time not to be afraid for Quynh’s life.

They had discussed Lykon’s death many a time since he’d passed. It was difficult for them, at first; they only spoke of him in the present tense, refusing in their language to acknowledge that he was gone. It was as if his immortality might kick in and bring him staggering back to them, the wound in his side healing up, as he apologized for taking so long.

They wanted him back. They knew he would not come.

It couldn’t be simply the number of times he had died before. Andromache and Quynh had each sustained far more deathblows than Lykon; for Andromache, it was _staggeringly_ more. It wasn’t that that particular spot in his stomach had been an unknown Achille’s heel; he had been struck there before with nary a consequence. It wasn’t that he’d lost the will to live; just the day before, his eyes had been bright with laughter as he waded out of the river.

It was precisely because there was no reason he had died that Andromache was sure Quynh would be next.

If anything, Andromache assumed, the loss of immortality would work backwards. Quynh would die, and then it would be Andromache’s turn. There would only ever be three immortals, and then they would be gone, and the world would balance out the dissonance that their existence had created.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it for a long time. Wrapped around Quynh at night, Andromache would lie with her eyes open, afraid of the loss sneaking up behind her to steal Quynh away as it had stolen Lykon. Andromache wasn’t sure she could stay sane if it happened; if losing Lykon had been like losing an arm, to lose Quynh would be as if her heart had been ripped out of her chest.

<><><>

Two years to the day after Lykon died, Quynh turned to Andromache in the night.

“You cannot continue this way, my love,” Quynh said softly, pressing her forehead against Andromache’s. Her voice was quiet but firm as she added, “you risk losing me to the fear that you will.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re distant. Every time you look at me, your eyes are waiting for the grief my absence will leave behind. Andromache,” this was said sharply, and Andromache could see the glint of Quynh’s eyes staring into hers in the dark, “you fight like you’ve decided it’s not worth it. You must finish mourning my death alongside Lykon’s.” Her fingers tightened around Andromache’s. “I am _here_. Act like it.”

“Lykon is dead.” Andromache’s voice was soft and sorrowful, as if she could fit all her pain, all her anxiety, into those three words. “You could be dead.”

“I will not,” Quynh said. Her hand left Andromache’s. Andromache could see her in the half-light of the fire’s embers. Reaching up to her neck. Pulling the loop of her necklace over the top of her head. Looping the cord over Andromache’s head.

“No,” Andromache said, drawing back in protest. “That’s _yours_.”

The pendant of the necklace was the one thing Quynh had kept with her since she became immortal. It was a teardrop of metal that looked far less precious than it truly was; no other object had been carried with Quynh through all her years of life. It wasn’t just a pendant. It was a symbol of the longevity of Quynh herself.

“No,” Quynh disagreed, _“I_ am yours. And now, so is this. Let me give you this, and even if I…” she paused. Took a breath. “Even if I leave you, as Lykon has, a part of me will still be next to your heart.”

They were quiet, listening to the world. To each other.

Andromache leaned forward and let Quynh loop the cord around her neck.

“Now,” Quynh said, “you stop worrying so much and you _live_ with me. We live.” Her voice was so solid, so self-assured, that it was impossible to argue.

“Yes,” Andromache said. “We live.”

Quynh fell asleep first. Andromache fingered the pendant, twisting it back and forth between her fingers.

For so long, it had been an assumption that they would be themselves forever. That they would fight for so long as they could stand. Andromache had lost the ease of existence; she had, for a time, forgotten that drifting through her not-so-forever life was an option. But Quynh was right. Andromache had decided that, if she could lose the ones she cared about, she wouldn’t care at all.

Well, no more. For the first time, she decided – _consciously_ decided – to live.

And for the first time since Lykon had died, she slept soundly.

<><><>

They grew into happiness again, together.

Andromache didn’t think she would have been able to do it alone. It would have been too much a burden to bear. But two pairs of shoulders was enough to carry the weight.

<><><>

It was a summer’s eve, hot as the devil’s home, when Andromache and Quynh dreamed again.

Andromache dreamt of soldier-sweat and swords flashing in the dawnlight. She saw a man’s face – not her own, but that of her enemy. She felt hatred fuel her hand as she drove her sword into his gut; joining the emotion was the sharp sensation of a weapon piercing her own heart, pressed forward by the very man she fought.

She hated him. Hated the man she had killed so very much. Because he had killed her in return.

 _But,_ Andromache thought fleetingly, herself for a brief moment, _not for long._

She woke up sticky and sweating. They were staying at an abandoned stone building in the north of the Rhineland, with rough-hewn blocks constituting its sides and ivy growing up along the walls. It was so hot that she and Quynh had drifted apart in the night, their bodies rejecting the additional heat offered by each other.

Quynh was awake in a moment more. She furrowed her brow as she looked at Andromache. “Did you—”

“I did,” Andromache replied. She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to remember the details of what she’d seen. “It is a man in the conflicts to the south.” A landmark; she thought she knew where he’d been. “Jerusalem. A soldier of Christ, I think.”

Quynh shook her head impatiently. “No. That is the conflict, it is true, but he fights against the Franks. He killed a light-skinned attacker before being struck down himself.”

“You’re mistaken, sweet.” Andromache distinctly remembered that in the dream, she had killed a man with skin a shade of light brown. Which meant the immortal she dreamt of, the one she had felt die, was one of the pilgrims fighting for what he believed to be true. Quynh _must_ have remembered wrong.

“ _You’re_ mistaken. But I understand,” a smile quirked at the corner of Quynh’s lips. “You were probably distracted by dreams of me.”

“You jest.”

“I do. But I also know that you’re wrong.”

Andromache got to her feet, rolling her shoulders. Early-morning light filtered in through the doorway. “Spar?” She grinned. “We shall see who is right and who is wrong.”

It was a habit long-entrenched that she and Quynh would face each other in a quick bout to resolve petty disagreements. It was difficult to settle small bets with card games as they used to. It called to mind too many painful memories.

Andromache could feel the energy buzzing through the both of them as they sparred. Neither one of them was saying it aloud, but they were both thinking it: a new one. A fellow immortal, the first since Lykon.

Perhaps this immortal would help to fill the gap Lykon had left. With every blow Andromache attempted to strike, every kick that Quynh blocked, Andromache felt hope spurring her movements. There hadn’t been a chance for more company in too long.

Not that she couldn’t be satisfied with Quynh forever, if need be. But Andromache missed what Lykon had provided them. This man could be another link.

Quynh got in a good set of blows and swept Andromache’s feet out from beneath her, landing with one knee driven into Andromache’s chest. Andromache sighed. “I yield,” she said, a smile playing at the edge of her lips. Even knowing it was wrong, she said, “the man is not from here.”

“So,” Quynh said, leaning closer. A strand of her black hair had slipped out of its bindings and fell to brush against Andromache’s cheek; it tickled. Quynh kissed her, gentle and quick, then smiled. “Shall we go find him?”

<><><>

Nicolò di Genova and Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani had killed each other.

For the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here they come...


	5. Of Battles and Blades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting patiently on the update! Work has been picking up and busy-ness follows. Hope you all enjoy!

Yusuf came back to himself with a start, the air of dusk cool on his skin. His fingers whispered over his chest instinctively, brushing lightly, then scrabbling at his torn garments. He _remembered_ how it had felt, his innards spilling out through the wound his enemy had delivered. Yusuf had thought, with a sweet vengeance as he died, that at least he had killed the man he’d fought.

But now, as he jammed his hand under his shirt and splayed his fingers across his midriff, he found no wound. Viscera and blood, certainly – it must’ve been his own – but not even a hint of the gory aftermath where he’d been sliced open.

He started rationalizing almost immediately. Perhaps, in the heat of the moment, he had somehow mistaken someone else’s wound for his own. Perhaps it was the shock of the battle, driving pain and fear into his heart. It didn’t make sense, but the fact that he didn’t have a scratch on him made even _less_ sense, so he was willing to believe one of the former options.

The only thing he knew for certain was that he’d killed that other man. They’d been so close Yusuf could see the man’s eyes were a dangerous, piercing hazel. So close that Yusuf could feel the spray of his enemy’s blood when he’d driven his blade into the man’s chest.

Yusuf focused on the stars above, then sat up. He’d been lying in an awkward position, his arms folded strangely beneath his body, but the aches were gone soon enough. He was sitting in a field of lumps – fallen fighters, like himself.

He wondered if the corpse of the other man was among them, or if some enemy soldier had dragged the body away. Yusuf imagined that the fighting had moved elsewhere; there were enough bodies that it didn’t make sense that there would’ve been time to properly honor the dead. If there had, Yusuf himself would have been discovered to be alive.

He got to his feet and stretched, twisting his arms to test his torso. Again, nothing. No pull at his abdomen, no history of pain engraved in his stomach. He gave a satisfied nod and turned towards the last encampment of his party, leaning down to pick up his sword as he went.

And then he heard it. A groan.

 _One of ours_ , was his first thought. Someone like him – a man who’d been struck down but hadn’t died. He turned immediately, sheathing his sword – the man was fairly close, it seemed. Someone was shifting on the ground only a few feet away from Yusuf. He couldn’t quite see in the dim light of dusk who it was, but as he approached the man’s outer garb became clear.

It was a foreigner.

Yusuf drew his blade again, falling into a crouch. The man didn’t seem to have noticed him yet. With a muttered curse in a language of which Yusuf knew only a few phrases, the figure on the ground braced himself on the ground with one arm and divested himself of his helmet with the other.

 _No_.

Yusuf could barely breathe.

It was _him_.

With his terrible eyes and anger etched in his face. With his blind faith and the ignorance that came along with it. It was the man Yusuf had killed.

Yusuf was bearing down on him within seconds, sword raised for a killing blow. He could see the enemy scrabble at his side for a weapon; Yusuf barely cared that as he slammed his blade into the man’s neck, the man shoved the sharp end of a half-broken spear into Yusuf’s gut.

With a shout of agony, Yusuf rolled to the side of the man, his entire body clenching around the blade of the spear. He grabbed at its broken shaft and tried to pull it out, but his body was already rejecting it; blood gushed out of his wound as he dislodged the spear from his insides.

So _this_ must be it, then. He was given a few moments more on the Earth so he could finish what he’d started. Reverse the miracle that had left his enemy alive and breathing.

Except… the mind-wrenching pain in his gut was already fading. As he looked down, he saw the edges of his wound _knitting together again_. Not something he could explain away on the tricks played by his own mind. Not this time.

A thought occurred to Yusuf. A horrible thought.

He looked to his side, at the man with eyes of hate.

The man looked back at him, the wound on his neck almost gone.

With a desperate yell, Yusuf drove his sword downward again.

<><><>

“No. Impossible.”

“I would’ve said the same thing about us. About Lykon’s end. Perhaps nothing is as impossible as it may seem.”

“But _two?_ ”

Quynh laughed. “I like this. It’s making you confused. You’re so rarely confused these days, Andromache. It’s good for you to wonder about the mysterious happenings of the world once more.”

“I wonder plenty.”

“Perhaps these two are meant to introduce novelty into our lives. Their… _approach_ to each other is certainly new compared to how you and I first met.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement. They _killed each other_ , sweet.”

“And what harm did it do? It’s unlikely to stick. Not so early. They’re too new.”

“Fair point.”

“Mmm. I know. Andromache?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think they’re going to do it again?”

<><><>

Yusuf would’ve thought that whatever curse had dragged him back into the world of the living again and again as he fought the enemy as tirelessly as he was able to would have taken care of sleeping, but that was apparently not the case. He and the other man both flagged in exhaustion as the hours passed; when one would fall asleep first, the other would take the opportunity to slice his throat.

By the fourth day, Yusuf thought that nothing could be closer to eternal torture than having to be near this man forever. Even the satisfaction of killing him again and again didn’t draw near to sating the anger each time the Frank opened his eyes.

By the fifth day, the enemy looked like he was feeling the same.

By the sixth day, Yusuf was brimming with frustration and fatigue. As the sun rose, he staggered to his feet again, ready to try something else.

Apparently, the other man had the same idea.

Before Yusuf could get a word out, the man was holding up a hand, palm facing out. He leaned over, breathing raggedly (Yusuf’s last attack had left half of the soldier’s lungs outside of his body instead of in their proper place, and it seemed to be taking longer to heal than usual.) “Wait,” he said, his voice tripping over the word in Yusuf’s language. He splayed his fingers over his heart. “Nicolò.”

 _A stupid name_ , Yusuf thought, but it felt like a gesture worth repeating. So he tapped his own chest, dipping his chin towards the enemy – Nicolò – in acknowledgement. “Yusuf.”

And then Yusuf rolled his shoulders and lifted his sword again, raising an eyebrow at Nicolò as if to say _are you ready?_

Nicolò’s answering shrug felt like he was saying _if we must._

And they fought again. This time, Yusuf died first.

<><><>

Andromache and Quynh were getting sidetracked.

It had started as a little border skirmish in a town in the south of the Rhineland. Then a farmer’s daughter, too lovely for her own good in a land that did not value her for much else, was kidnapped by a travelling group of bandits. The girl’s mother had spread her pleas throughout the town; they had gone unanswered and unheard.

Well. _Mostly_ unheard. Andromache and Quynh weren’t the first people to hear, but they were the first to listen. And to decide to do something about it.

“Do you think we should leave the two to fight?” Andromache was thinking about how annoying it would be to track two separate men across the earth if they were to split from each other.

Quynh shook her head. “They can wait. We will save this girl.” The corner of her mouth quirked up. “Besides, this way we can give them a little more time to work their energy out.”

So they rode east, after the kidnappers, and the men to the south were left to themselves for a while longer.

<><><>

Yusuf learned Nicolò’s language slowly. They never left each other’s sight, but they weren’t fighting day and night anymore. Nicolò had been the one to reach out, stumbling over the next few words in Yusuf’s language on the tenth morning.

Nicolò had looked just as bone-tired as Yusuf felt. “Until the end of the day,” Nicolò had said. “We wait to kill… to kill each other until then.” He’d looked up at Yusuf and given him a rather long-suffering look that Yusuf thought he didn’t deserve, given that Yusuf had died just as many times as he’d killed Nicolò.

Still. The request was… interesting. It belied intelligence that Yusuf hadn’t been sure existed in the head of a Frank.

Besides, Yusuf needed a good long nap.

“Agreed,” he said, and to his surprise, he gave Nicolò a tired smile. “If you think you have the patience.”

Their little parlays grew longer after that. They still killed each other, of course – it would be a travesty had they not. But they also shared waterskins and lewd jokes, picking up on each other’s native tongues in the breaks between their battles. Yusuf learned that Nicolò usually went silent if he couldn’t remember a word. Yusuf, on the other hand, lapsed into his own language when he couldn’t find the right word in Nicolò’s.

Yusuf found himself picking up on other habits of Nicolò’s, too. The way he’d pick at the dirt under his nails as they sat next to each other on a riverbank (they’d started moving around after a while, driven by thirst and then hunger from the killing field upon which they’d first met.) The way he would pray silently, his lips moving with no sound. The interesting curve of his upper lip.

Yusuf realized it on a sunny morning when they were joking as they cleaned off in a swift-moving river. Nicolò slapped his hand across the surface of the water, sending a splash towards Yusuf, and it was as simple as that.

For the first time, Yusuf wasn’t thinking about the next death he would bestow upon his enemy (his friend?). For the first time, he was thinking solely of this moment, the two of them together, and knowing that it wouldn’t last forever.

Enemies were enemies, after all. And even if Yusuf didn’t want to kill Nicolò right now, soon enough he would be duty-bound to do it once again.

Nicolò glanced up at Yusuf, a smile caught on his face, and Yusuf held his breath for a moment. Just a moment of peace.

And that was when the women rode over the hill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yusuf and Nicolo, sitting in a tree...


	6. Suffer Him to Live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “They’re dumbasses,” Andromache said. “Complete and total dumbasses.”
> 
> “True,” Quynh replied, “but they’re our dumbasses.”
> 
> \---------
> 
> Just for reference... this chapter sat in my WIP folder for at least a week with these the only lines. Suffice to say I did not end up including them.

Andromache and Quynh found the new immortals _flirting._

It had to be flirting, Andromache thought. Nothing else could explain the two of the men stripped down to their undergarments, shirtless and half-submerged in the river. One of them had just _splashed_ the other. The tension was palpable, even from the top of the hill.

Which made no sense, because Andromache’s dreams had _still_ been filled with bloodshed and murder the last time she’d slept.

Either these were the wrong men (she doubted it – she recognized them both from all the dreams she’d spent studying one through the eyes of another) or they were very, very confused.

<><><>

When Nicolò had not yet died, he dreamt of women about as often as he dreamt of men. It was only natural, he thought; he interacted with a great deal of them both, though he had easily slipped under the mantle of chastity early in his priesthood. He found dreams to be interesting; worth studying but not languishing over. It was only when his dreams drifted into… illicit territory that he woke washed with a guilt that could only be cleansed in confession.

He had assumed that, in the wake of whatever devilish curse had left him still walking the earth, his dreams had shifted, too. It was part of the curse that he was treated to a confusing whir of the same two strange women each night – along with glimpses of the man he fought and laughed with every day. (Nicolò did not want to examine the implications of those dreams further than he had to. He had been in the church for long enough to become practiced at denying his own impulses – denying, perhaps, that they even existed).

But his theory must’ve been wrong, because here were the two women. Both of them strong and dressed in an entirely improper fashion, more like men than members of the fairer sex. Nicolò had nearly tripped over himself sloshing out of the river to cover himself with something; he’d barely shoved his arms into the sleeves of his rank undershirt before they’d ridden up.

Yusuf apparently had no such compunctions about what the women saw him in; he was taking his time getting dressed. Nicolò’s gaze caught on Yusuf’s midriff, on the muscles he knew so well (he was intimately familiar with the curves of Yusuf’s stomach, for all the times he’d shoved a blade through them) and a very indecent thought that was altogether untoward flickered through Nicolò’s head. He forcibly removed his gaze and reminded himself that the women must be here for a reason.

He glanced up at them, realizing at once that they might not even speak his language. But before he could even open his mouth, they opened theirs.

The woman in red spoke to Yusuf; his language spilled easily off of her tongue. The other, with light skin and hair a dark, burnished brown, greeted Nicolò in near-perfect Italian. “They call me Andromache. What’s your name, soldier?”

Nicolò looked up at her warily. “You are in my dreams.”

“That’s quite an interesting name.”

Nicolò narrowed his eyes at her. “You know what I mean.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” the woman in red quipped, jolting out of Yusuf’s language like she’d been listening in, “we’ve been dreaming of you, too.”

This did not make Nicolò feel better. If anything, it made him feel more confused, more paranoid. Who were these women? What did they know? Had he… had he committed some sort of indiscretion in the eyes of God? Were they his judgement?

The stranger who’d spoken to him first – Andromache, that was it, Andromache – rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Fine,” she said, and then she drew a sword.

Nicolò flinched. The sound of steel was apparently enough to cause a visceral reaction in him, now. He blamed Yusuf. But he knew that if this was his judgement – if this was his final death, dealt from an unexpected source – he would accept it. His mouth formed a silent beginning to a prayer.

And then the woman stabbed herself in the side.

“Oh, _shit,_ ” she said, pulling the sword back out. “Shit shit shit.”

“Did you hit an artery, Andromache?” The other woman’s voice was teasing as she glanced at her companion.

“Close your damn mouth, Quynh.”

Realization was dawning on Nicolò, slowly but inexorably. She… she had…

“You’re like us,” he said, dumbfounded, and realized only then that he had been thinking of himself and Yusuf as one. Them versus the women. Not against each other.

It was a dangerous thought.

Andromache tugged her shirt up to show Nicolò the absence of a wound – just the dark red stickiness of blood spreading over her side. She gave the blood a dispassionate rub with the palm of her hand, which was unsuccessful in doing anything but spreading it around. She cussed under her breath and pulled the top back down, looking up to give Nicolò a nod.

“Correct,” she said. “I suppose you’ve figured it out by now. We can’t die.”

“Mostly,” Quynh interjected, and Andromache shot back a quick comment in Yusuf’s language. The confirmation of his worst fears was almost as confusing to Nicolò as the switch between languages.

He couldn’t die. The thought sent a shock of terror through him. He truly was accursed, meant to walk the world, seeped in loneliness, until God saw fit to spare him. Or perhaps he was damned forever.

“Don’t make that face,” Quynh said, glancing at him. “It’s not a death sentence.”

Then she laughed.

Nicolò glanced at Yusuf, who looked only slightly confused. Yusuf seemed to be taking this in stride. Nicolò certainly was _not_.

He couldn’t imagine a worse group of people with which to be forced to spend a dozen lifetimes.

<><><>

“Nicolò! Behind you!” With a whoop, Yusuf winged the ball Nicolò’s way. Nicolò snatched it easily out of the air, then immediately ducked and braced; Quynh, on her way to topple him, found herself toppling instead, upended by his shoulder. She landed with a _thump_ on her back in the dirt of the playing field, fire in her eyes as she rolled.

Yusuf laughed in her face (which they both knew was in jest, but still seemed to rankle) as Nicolò took off down the field. He had almost reached the end when Andromache made a last-ditch attempt to cut him off; with a final burst of speed, he darted past her and won the game.

Yusuf reached him only moments after, tackling him to the ground. They rolled in the dirt for a moment before Nicolò ended up flat on his back, Yusuf braced above him. They held each other’s gaze for a moment – just a moment – before Yusuf kissed him.

Yusuf’s lips were always warm, always soft, and _nearly_ always curved into a smile. That was what Nicolò liked best, because the smiles weren’t an inherent part of the lips but were an inherent part of Yusuf, which meant they always made the kisses taste better.

It had taken five years for Yusuf to kiss him with those smiling lips the first time. Five years, as Andromache would’ve said, was nothing – not to them, not now. But it hadn’t felt like nothing to Nicolò. It had felt like an aching in his very bones every time he looked at Yusuf. It had felt like a string wound tight between the two of them, plucked painfully with every carefully controlled interaction. It had felt like an upheaval of belief.

Still. Nicolò would never have given up that first kiss. That first kiss made him grateful to draw breath.

It had been at night, after a battle – one of those fights that left him exhausted but fulfilled. He hadn’t died, not even once. But there was a reason for that.

It had been near the end, when an enemy had attacked with a ferocity that reminded Yusuf of Andromache. It helped that the woman wielded an axe with skill that belied her age. Nicolò would have been impressed if he weren’t trying to get his sword loose from where it had stuck between the plates of another soldier’s armor. He knew as he pulled it free that he wouldn’t have time to block the woman’s killing blow.

And then Yusuf had seen. He’d stepped in front of that axe, that blade meant for Nicolò. Nicolò’s dispensed with the woman, a twinge of guilt in his heart to have to ruin such a promising warrior. But he couldn’t stop thinking of what Yusuf had done.

It wasn’t just the action itself. It was the _ease_ with which he’d done it, the absolute lack of hesitation. And Nicolò’s realization that he would have done the same.

That night, Nicolò took Yusuf out under the stars. They walked for a long time, despite the ache in their muscles; they walked far, far away from the camp, until the moon was all that lit their way and the fire was a speck of orange in the distance. And then Nicolò turned to Yusuf and said he was ready.

He didn’t even have to explain what for.

Yusuf’s smile caught on his face. He reached out, tentatively, and skimmed the edge of Nicolò’s jaw with his thumb. Nicolò closed his eyes and leaned into Yusuf’s hand.

They stayed that way for a few moments, just the two of them together under the stars, and then Yusuf leaned in.

The kiss was hesitant at first. Nothing like what Nicolò would have expected, based on what he’d observed from the times he’d caught Quynh and Andromache tucked into corners or opened the flap of a tent at the wrong moment. As strange as it was, observation was all Nicolò had to go on. He’d never kissed someone.

His first thought was _I must be awful at this_ , and then he wasn’t thinking much of anything anymore. Every so often, whispers of sin crept into the corners of his mind. He tried to ignore them. He wondered if they would ever leave. He also knew that even if they didn’t, he wouldn’t give up Yusuf because the prejudices of his childhood were still engraved in his mind.

Those doubts faded over time. Nicolò and Yusuf fell into a pattern. Sometimes they would break apart from Quynh and Andromache with plans laid to meet up again in a few years; once, Nicolò and Yusuf even tried being apart for a month or two (suffice to say it wasn’t agreeable to either). Nicolò always missed Yusuf’s laugh. His eyes. And, most of all, that soft and loving smile. The smile that promised Nicolò it was all right, that Yusuf would love him (love him!) no matter what.

It had taken five years for Yusuf to kiss him, but it had taken much longer for Nicolò to feel fully at peace with kissing back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, I know that this chapter took a while to go up and I thank you for your patience. Unfortunately, I want to announce a semi-hiatus (i.e. I may update but it will be VERY inconsistent) for at least a few weeks. My job just clicked into overtime mode, and I want to be honest about how much I'll be working on fic! (The answer is: not much, probably.)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed and I look forward to finding the time for another chapter :)


	7. Bound in Chains of Iron

Andromache had been captured thrice. Three times, total, in her centuries-long lifespan. The longest she’d ever stayed in enemy hands was two days. She had always been bound in rope; when one could yank one’s hands out of one’s bindings without worrying about the aspect of a dislocated thumb, one could usually free oneself of such bindings fairly quickly. And then go about raining destruction upon one’s captors.

Still, she had hated each time she found herself in enemy hands with a burning passion; capture was annoying and often accompanied by a plethora of pain, to boot. Though apart from the possible pain, she was never _scared_. What was the worst they could do to her? By the gods, she was _immortal_.

She did not have the imagination to conceive of a possibility so terrible she would never recover.

That was why, when she and Quynh were caught freeing “witches” about to be burned, the first thing Andromache did was laugh in their new captors’ faces.

<><><>

But to rewind for a moment, to the days before. Yusuf and Nicolò had split away from Andromache and Quynh; the men went south, the women north. They agreed to meet three weeks from the day they left each other.

Rumor on the road said a young girl was being carted from town to town in a cage down south, a “witch” contained for the populace before being burned. Official reports told of a mass burning planned in the north. The four immortals flipped a coin to see who would go to which cause. The girl: Yusuf and Nicolò. The women: Andromache and Quynh.

It would be easy, Andromache thought. She was positive that she and Quynh were in the right, for one; in all her time on earth, the only supernatural thing Andromache had ever encountered was herself. She didn’t believe in ghosts, and she _certainly_ didn’t believe in witches.

The fight was quick and – to Andromache’s delight – _surprising_. They got the women free of the dungeon in which they were kept and were almost out of town themselves when someone shouted the alarm. Quynh picked off a few guards before stepping in front of a fleeing woman to take the shot aimed for her. She crumpled to the ground and Andromache stopped next to her, sending one glance at the fleeing women.

 _We could cause a distraction_ , Andromache thought, and she decided – quite stubbornly, as there were a _lot_ of soldiers and guards milling about this city – that she was going to fight them all.

They took her and Quynh, though she and Quynh took many of them first. And Andromache laughed as they stripped the two of them down, divesting them of weapons and clothes, as if Quynh and Andromache weren’t just as lethal with their bare hands.

Except.

The simple white shifts they were given were not strong enough to choke a man without tearing. Their prison cell had no windows. And their chains. Their _chains_.

Thick metal, screwed tight. Even if one had no attachment to one’s thumbs, one could not pull out of the manacles. And there was nothing sharp to try lopping off their hands with; they considered teeth, but they healed too quickly to be able to make much of a dent without cold steel.

They didn’t take Andromache’s necklace – _Quynh’s_ necklace. Apparently, they didn’t find it of much value or danger. It rested on Andromache’s chest, just below her collarbone.

There was pain, early on. Torture, really, to aid with the “interrogations.” Slicing and burning and poking that made Andromache hiss in agony and spit when they asked her who she was working with, which names she could provide them. They wanted her to betray other women, to condemn them, women she’d never known and never would. But Andromache was used to a little pain; she did not answer.

Quynh, beside her, did not stay silent. She kept up a lively diatribe of curses and jokes in her native tongue, reveling in the fact that none of these ill-educated men knew what she was saying. Andromache had to admit that she snorted more than once at a particularly crass joke about whom their interrogators should please themselves with.

And it was all bearable, because Quynh was there. Even when they were hanged – even _that_ , which was possibly one of the worst things Andromache had ever experienced, sputtering alive and choking to death and sputtering alive and choking to death until the ropes were cut by the witch-hunters, signing crosses over their chests – even then, Andromache thought it was bearable. Because Quynh was by her side.

They joked about burning. Disgusting, dirty, their hair tangled so intricately Andromache considered chopping hers off afterward, they talked about how they’d never been burned before. Burning, Andromache posited, necessitated capture; no enemy on the battlefield ever tried to _burn_ you to death.

Besides, they had been counting the days. It had been three weeks yesterday since they left Yusuf and Nicolò. Once their fellow immortals realized that something was wrong, they’d come storming in (the first time, Quynh noted, that the men would be saving the women and not the other way around) and end this sorry episode at last.

Until then, they were ready for anything.

They _thought_ they were ready for anything.

<><><>

“Just you and me.”

“Until the end.”

<><><>

Quynh was not a woman who enjoyed being contained.

Yusuf, Andromache, Nicolò: they all knew that. There was a reason why Quynh, even as the smallest among them, did not wiggle through tight spaces into fortresses they needed to take. Even when she acted as their sniper, picking off enemies from far above, Quynh preferred trees to towers, branches to stone. She did not like being confined, even by Andromache. Quynh was a bird cloaked in crimson; she never could stand a cage.

This was why Andromache’s heart broke in two when she saw the Iron Maiden.

Her first coherent thoughts were simple – along the lines of _no, no, please no_ – as the men unlocked Quynh’s manacles and dragged her to her feet. Quynh might have been immortal, but she wasn’t invincible, didn’t have superhuman strength – especially not when she, like Andromache, had been starved, beaten, and killed for weeks on end. She fought (of course she fought, Quynh was a wildcat; it was not in her nature to go quietly) but she could not stop them.

Andromache could not stop them, either. No matter how she pulled against her chains, no matter how loud she screamed, tears tracking down her dirty cheeks. She yanked so hard she felt her wrists dislocate and heal again, felt the cuffs dig deep scores into her skin, and _still_ she could not get to Quynh. Could not get to Quynh. Could not get to Quynh.

And suddenly all Andromache could see was Lykon’s face, the blood bubbling on Lykon’s lips. Quynh’s words: _I will not._ Will not die, will not go. A pendant pressed between hands. A promise from long ago, whispered in the dark. _Just you and me. Until the end. Until the stars fall._

“QUYNH!” Desperation.

“ANDROMACHE!” Fear.

And then there was silence. And that was the worst of all.

<><><>

They came for Andromache two nights later. She dangled in her chains, entirely spent. She had screamed until her voice was hoarse, pulled at her bindings until they dripped blood. She had fought even when they hadn’t fed her or given her water since that horrid day. When she slipped into fitful sleep, a dark and dangerous undertaking, she did not dream.

It took six men to drag her to the pyre. They bound her there in chains of iron, so many that they weighed her down as much as secured her to the post. She had never been burned alive before. That’s what she’d said to—

She shut her eyes, cool composure replacing the frazzled ends of her mind. If she was going to get Quynh back – and she _was_ going to get Quynh back, there was no other option in her mind – she needed to get free first. She needed to catch up to that ship before it dumped its cargo. She _needed_ to, just as she needed to breathe, because Quynh _was_ her breath.

Andromache had already lost her gold. She could not lose her red, too.

<><><>

Though Andromache could not know it, she was already too late. The Iron Maiden toppled over the side of the ship at the very instant the pyre was lit. Quynh was upside down for one terrifying moment before she hit the water, and suddenly the water was _everywhere_ , rushing in through the holes of her face as she sank. She could feel the press of the water above her increasing as she plummeted down, and she was scared, so scared, and still she tried to think of swimming lessons in a warm lake with Andromache, holding her breath as they dipped together under the water, kisses that left bubbles trailing up towards the surface.

And then Quynh could not hold her breath anymore.

<><><>

Quynh drowned. Andromache burned. Quynh drowned. Andromache burned. Quynh drowned.

Andromache dragged herself away from the charred post, half of her body still scorching and healing in turns from the too-hot chains.

The chains that were now her greatest weapon.

She fought. She used the iron they had wrapped her in to destroy them; any soldier that drifted too close got a hot lash of metal that sent them howling to nurse their burns. She was a demon from hell, just as they’d wanted her to be in the first place. A true witch.

And it took everything she had not to kill them all where they stood. Because they had information she needed, and she was _not_ going to let them get away with it.

All the while, Quynh drowned. Quynh drowned. Quynh drowned.

<><><>

Her lungs expelled the water. She had an instant to scream, to think, before the water flooded her again. At first she tried to be sensible, to find a way to save herself (every time she died, she lost her train of thought.) Eventually, her mind shifted into what she ironically considered to be its survival mode. One thought, and one thought alone.

_Andromache, Andromache, Andromache._

_Where are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Sorry (not sorry) to end on that note. Glad to be back!


	8. Drowning Sorrows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... we're back! I'm SO sorry about the pun in the title.

Andromache had never found solace in drink.

Of course she’d consumed alcohol; she was thousands of years old, after all. She’d had sake, wine, beer, distilled liquor that Nicolò had come up with himself. She’d been drunk (though never to the point of blacking out – usually, her body recognized the alcohol as a poison before then and began to purge it from her system.) She’d been buzzed. She’d traded sloppy kisses with Quynh while they sipped from the same bottle.

In the first month after Quynh was lost, Andromache tried to track down the sailors who had taken her out to sea. (To sea? They didn’t even know if it _had_ been the sea – didn’t know if the ship had sailed into some bay or island inlet to drop its screaming cargo.) Andromache tried not to think these things at first. They made her chest feel like it had caved in around a deep and agonizing emptiness. The kind of empty her immortality could not fill.

If Lykon had been a pocket of sadness deep in her stomach, Quynh was a gaping wound.

Still. Andromache was practical. She was good at what she did. She searched for the ship, searched for any sign of it – she wracked her memory of the glimpse she’d gotten of the vessel for any hint as to what it had been called. She cursed herself for not remembering more; she’d been focused on Quynh, only Quynh, as the doors slammed shut between them.

The ship was what Andromache should have been focused on, the more important factor of the tableau. Not the way she lost Quynh; the way to get her archer _back_.

Most of the men who had captured Andromache and Quynh were dead. The ones Andromache had spared at the site of her burning had, for the most part, not been among the inner circle of the killers who had decided Quynh’s fate. Those who had not been caught up in Andromache’s wrath had fled. Right into Yusuf and Nicolò, who had chosen the time of Andromache’s burning to make their move.

Yusuf and Nicolò had not known that Quynh was gone by then, did not know the fate of the fourth immortal; they had had no reason to keep Andromache’s captors alive. They killed with impunity, blades flashing in tandem. When they found Andromache – Andromache _alone_ – Yusuf was the one to step forward with a question in his eyes. The blood of some unfortunate inquisitor had bathed the right side of his neck in red.

One word: “Quynh?”

Andromache shook her head. She was still processing what had occurred. Still deciding if she believed that it had happened. Not quite understanding that the secret to where Quynh’s coffin rested lay in the minds of the men outside the yard, bodies still cooling. It took a moment for her mind to catch up.

The ones that remained knew nothing. The ones she had needed were dead.

Andromache let out a hoarse yell. It was exactly the sound a heart would make, breaking.

<><><>

Andromache had never found solace in drink.

After five years with no leads, she started to take the edge off of her nights with liquor before bed. (She’d stayed sober since she’d lost Quynh, not wanting any substance inhibiting her ability to find the perpetrators and squeeze every last drop of knowledge out of them.)

Five years more, and she had progressed to alcohol through the day.

Five years after that, after they had found out the name of the ship (and also discovered that a storm had sunk it on the way back from Quynh’s last voyage), Andromache eyed a bottle of wine and downed the entire thing.

She was not an alcoholic. It was impossible for an immortal to be an alcoholic. She just… drank more than the average human. She could handle it; she _needed_ more alcohol, since her body tended to try to alleviate her intoxication if she kept to normal amounts.

Her thoughts tended to move in a cycle. She lounged on a hammock in Yusuf’s homeland, fingering her pendant ( _Quynh’s pendant, Andromache, never forget that it is Quynh’s pendant._ ) A bottle dangled from her right hand.

 _She could be anywhere by now. Tides, shifting seafloors, animals._ Andromache took a swig. _She’s dying. Over and over. And I can’t do a goddamn thing about it._ Another swig, deeper this time. _She could be dead_. Another swig. And then the last thought that came, always the last one, the one that made Andromache envy the ability of humans to end their own lives if they so chose. _Maybe, if she were dead, she would be better off._

There was usually nothing left in her bottle by that point, but if there was, that was when she finished it.

<><><>

“We can’t let her do this to herself, you know.” Nicolò’s voice was soft, gentle. He was speaking Yusuf’s first tongue, the words slipping out like Nicolò was native to the language himself. Yusuf tilted on his side, yawning as sunlight trickled through the canvas. “ _Keep_ doing it to herself, I mean,” Nicolò adjusted, his tone growing just slightly more urgent.

Yusuf sighed. He pressed a kiss in the notch of Nicolò’s jaw, just below the ear, his beard brushing Nicolò’s cheek. “It’s not like we can stop her. Andromache will do what Andromache will do.”

“She’s killing herself.”

“Nicolò. We of all people know that’s not possible.”

Nicolò tilted onto his back, staring upward with frustration in his eyes. “You know what I mean. She is… it is still a death. Emotional, spiritual, whatever you’d like to call it.”

“You want us to intervene. To tell her to stop?”

“No,” Nicolò’s voice was a burning coal. That was how he got sometimes, with the people he loved. He always sounded that way when he was worried about Yusuf. It was one of the reasons Yusuf loved him. “I’m going to fight her.”

<><><>

Nicolò shrugged his shoulders, cracked his neck. He held one of his favorite swords, its edge sharp enough to slice a single hair floating in a pool of water. He knew because he’d tested it.

Andromache sized him up with red eyes. Her words were slurred, if only slightly. (Nicolò and Yusuf could tell. They’d known her for too long not to be able to.) “You sure you want to do this?” She shifted her grip on her ax, clutching the handle with an ease that never seemed to disappear alongside her sobriety.

“We made a deal, Andromache,” Nicolò said calmly. “I win, you stop with the drink and we live our lives. We look for Quynh, yes, but we do not languish if we cannot find her. You win, and Yusuf and I won’t bother you. We’ll leave, if that’s what you want.”

Andromache didn’t know what she wanted. Maybe it was something as simple as peace. Maybe she could get there, with enough liquor, without Yusuf and Nicolò giving her sympathetic glances every time she stumbled home.

“Deal,” she said, giving her head a little shake. When alcohol was still coursing through her system, it felt almost like everything she was looking at had softer edges. That wasn’t good for a fight. She knew that, and in a brief moment of clarity, she realized she needed to ask if they could duel later. When she had her wits about her. Not that she couldn’t win a fight buzzed, but—

She had no chance to even open her mouth. Nicolò was driving at her, his sword upraised. She parried his strike with a shift of her ax, the movement aided by hundreds of years of practice.

Her eyes narrowed. It didn’t matter. She’d win anyways.

Ax against sword made for an interesting match. Andromache was power, precision; she had hundreds of years practice on Nicolò. But she was only fighting to win. She realized, as they battled (she couldn’t call this sparring, really couldn’t) that _he_ was fighting for something more.

Usually, her mind cleared as she fought. Now, it only seemed to grow more sluggish as convoluted thoughts echoed through her head. If she lost, she’d lose her only escape. She couldn’t lose. _Couldn’t_.

She pushed forward with renewed vigor, nearly landing a blow. They were to fight until first blood; neither had reached that point yet. Between immortals, a bout could last a few minutes or longer. Nothing like the fights Andromache could finish against untrained militiamen in a heartbeat.

It happened fast. As Andromache lunged forward, ax upraised, her pendant swung free from her shirt. Nicolò adjusted his strike, the tip if his blade slicing shallowly through the string that held the pendant, and Andromache felt its weight drop from her neck.

Without hesitation, she twisted so she could catch it, throwing herself off-balance and leaving her side open to attack. Nicolò took his chance, cutting a thin, shallow line into her hip that made her hiss at the pain. It was a small injury, gone in seconds. But it was also a victory. For him.

Andromache clutched the pendant like a lifeline, its string dangling, split in twain, from her hand. She looked up at Nicolò with betrayal in her eyes. “Cheat.”

“Haven’t you always said anything is fair play when the stakes are life and death?” Nicolò, to his credit, did look sorry; his shoulders were angled downward just slightly, his expression apologetic. But that wasn’t an excuse. Especially when…

“It wasn’t life and death,” Andromache spat. “Not at all.”

“Andromache,” Yusuf said, and she felt his hand fall on her shoulder from behind. She resisted the urge to spin on her heel and toss it off. Why did she feel so _angry?_ How could they have done this to her, broken her apart so easily? “Look at yourself. Please.”

Some part of her brain, some small and wise and ancient part, told her to listen.

Her hands were quivering, one clutching the pendant, the other her labrys handle. Her teeth were gritted, her muscles all tensed like she was about to tear into Nicolò full-force, no holds barred. Her heart was thumping wildly, almost like it wanted to leap out of her chest, and she was so, so angry.

Not at Nicolò. Not at Yusuf.

At herself.

Because the pendant in her hand and the memories tucked into the corners of her mind were the only things Andromache had left of Quynh. And those weren’t enough.

She wanted Quynh. She wanted her and she’d _lost_ her. It was her own fault. And that was what Andromache desperately wanted to forget, even if only for a moment.

She stalked to the nearest tree and buried her ax into it. She knew Nicolò and Yusuf’s eyes were on her back as she strode into their quarters.

She came back out with her stash of bottles and wineskins and flasks. Staring Nicolò straight in the eyes, she poured them out one by one, part of her flinching as she heard the liquid splash against the ground.

The last drops slipped from the last flask. Andromache was already thirsty. She placed the containers on the ground in front of her, crossed her arms, and looked from Nicolò to Yusuf, Yusuf to Nicolò.

“All right, then,” she said, and it was all she could do to keep her voice from breaking. “What now?”

“Now,” Nicolò said, sounding more sure of himself than ever, “we make a plan.”

<><><>

It wasn’t like they hadn’t had a plan before; they _had_. But that plan, that methodical tracking down of sailors and captors, had failed.

It was time to begin anew.

And as her mind cleared, as her muscles settled and her body rested, Andromache had an idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the canon divergence begins...


	9. The Frenchman's Upheaval

Sixty-two years was nothing to an immortal. Sixty-two years was a breath, a stutter of a heartbeat. It took twenty-two years for them to halt their first search; Nicolò defeated Andromache nearly thirty years after Quynh was taken from them. When Andromache came to know sobriety again – when she fell back into the easy comfort of leadership and came up with the first inkling of a plan – they began the search once more in earnest.

They sought out scientists first. Men and women from the far reaches of the earth, people who knew the ways of rusting metal and saltwater and tides. Nicolò apprenticed under a woman in China who knew the waves like she knew her own heartbeat; he learned to chart the ways in which the tides flowed. Yusuf sought out a woman in Egypt persecuted for her studies of magnetism. Andromache found a man who specialized in fireworks and – if you knew to ask – explosives.

It took them thirteen years to collect the knowledge they needed to track down the ship, making it forty-three years since Quynh had left them. Andromache thought often of the coffin and its occupant. She tried not to think of Lykon.

Because if immortals were “born,” as Andromache might have put it, with a certain number of deaths before their last and final, Quynh must already have run out of hers.

<><><>

They found the shipwreck through a combination of archival documents (letters from the men on board), word of mouth (it had gone down within view of a small coastal town that took them what felt like an age to track down) and luck. Once they knew it was in the general area, they bought a diving bell and went out with a crew to search.

The bell itself was a fantastically odd contraption. It looked exactly like how it should have – a bell placed opening-down onto the water. Nicolò had been the one to see the inventor Smeaton put his creation into action – he’d arranged their original purchase of one of the bells, too. As the bell descended, a surface air pump maintained the pressurized air in the container.

They had learned their lesson, of course; one immortal always stayed at the surface, and the two beneath the waves wore thick ropes around their waists. Even if the bell were to fail and they were to die, they would not be swept away by currents to deeper and deeper waters, condemned to infinite drownings.

It had been fifty years since Quynh had been dropped. Calculating it out (even though Andromache knew she would hate herself for doing so), that came to thousands of deaths. And that was only if Andromache was being generous about how much time Quynh survived between each.

They knew that Quynh was not aboard the ship. That was not the purpose of their expeditions. When they found the wreck, the hulk of rotting wood dark against the seafloor below them (they had to be methodical; they still hadn’t found a light that would work in the water, so their best chance was to bump up vertically against the wreck itself) they knew that the most difficult part of the search was just beginning.

Now that they’d found the wreck, they needed to trace back the tides.

<><><>

Nicolò shook his head. “It’s just too much water.”

Yusuf peered at the map over his shoulder as if he might find something different. Instead, he let out a soft hiss of air. “Far too much. The challenge, of course, is that even if we cover it all, we run the risk that Quynh shifts in the tides and we miss her.”

Andromache stood and paced, linking her hands behind her head. “We don’t give up,” she said with a small shake of her head. “Please. We can’t give up.”

“Do you think we ever would?” Yusuf’s voice was kind. “We are family, Andromache. This is what we do. If it were me in that coffin, or Yusuf, or you… we would still be searching.”

“Sixty-two years,” Andromache said, dropping a curse under her breath. “And no sign of her.”

They’d narrowed down the area in which Quynh might have fallen. And, truthfully, it was far better, far smaller, than the space they’d started with. Still, they had reasoned that were they to check the entire seafloor, using the same technique they had when searching for the wreck, it would take hundreds of dives. And, as Yusuf had just pointed out, they might miss Quynh in the process.

Andromache went to bed last that night. She spent the evening poring over the map, her eyelids drooping, long after Yusuf and Nicolò retired.

Glancing at their bedroom door, she considered going out for a bottle of wine. They would never know – she could be sure of it. But… no. She couldn’t. Not tonight. Not when her mind, fresh and sharp, still had a chance of producing a solution to the entire mess.

She climbed into bed, despair percolating in her veins.

And she _dreamt_.

<><><>

She was a soldier. That much was expected; that much was obvious. But… she wasn’t fighting on the battlefield.

She could feel a thick, scratchy rope around her neck – Andromache knew that feeling well, and even in the dream, even when she knew it wasn’t herself, her stomach grew queasy at the knowledge of what was about to happen. The air was scented with hatred; she looked down at several of her fellow soldiers and frowned. Their livery was fine, their expressions disgusted.

So she had done something dishonorable. She assumed that was the case, at least. And she was likely a man; it appeared she was fighting on the side of Napoleon, for the glory of France. (At least, if the uniforms were anything to go by.) Andromache gritted her teeth as the platform dropped from beneath her feet.

Her neck snapped, quick and painful, and then she was dead until she woke up.

<><><>

Andromache blinked awake and nearly tumbled to the floor in her haste to get out of bed. She was at Nicolò and Yusuf’s door in moments, giving it a cursory rap of her knuckles before she pushed her way in.

Nicolò nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Andromache; he was still pulling on pants. And Yusuf was tugging on a shirt, his eyes sparkling.

“A new one,” Nicolò said, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Andromache didn’t know how she could express to them what she was feeling. It was like hope had flooded her body, filling her from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head. Because of her realization. The first thing she’d thought of when she awoke.

“Yusuf, Nicolò.” Her mouth was dry. She swallowed, looking from one of her companions to the other. “If we are dreaming of him, he is dreaming of her.”

<><><>

Yusuf’s hands trembled as he sketched out the scenes he could recall. Andromache threw descriptions at him as he went, Nicolò chiming in every so often.

The energy in the room was palpable. It was like electricity jumping through the spaces between them. Nicolò packed food for their journey as Andromache finished up with Yusuf, and then Andromache was out the door with a bag of coins to pay the diving team to wait until the three of them returned. She nearly ran to the rendezvous with the leader.

And then the three of them were on the road, four horses between them. They hadn’t been able to determine exactly where the soldier had been hung, but Nicolò had already determined where most soldiers were spread across the front. They assumed that after a few more nights of sleep and dreams, they would be able to pinpoint the new immortal’s location. And if they could not do it by dream, well, then, they would ferret him out somehow.

Sixty-two years, and here he was. Hope.

<><><>

Sebastien Le Livre choked awake, the ghost of a rope still taut around his neck. It took him a moment to orient himself; the stench of unwashed bodies and death was thick in his nostrils. With a glance to his left and a glance to his right, he ascertained that he had been unceremoniously dumped in a pile of bodies.

Not just any bodies. He caught a glimpse of Pierre’s bloated face. Pierre had been the one to encourage Sebastien to desert in the first place. And look where that had led him.

Led _them_.

 _Mon Dieu._ Sebastien moaned and sat up. Honestly, he felt like he should’ve been doing worse. He’d heard of men surviving the noose before, but he’d always assumed those were fairy stories. Perhaps he’d gotten lucky somehow – perhaps his executioners had pulled his body down before he’d suffocated, and he’d remained unconscious until now.

But… he thought he’d remembered a snap. A snap, and a sharp pain in his neck.

Memories returned to him slowly. A trickle, then a flood. Not just of his desertion, his trial, his hanging. Recollections of three faces cast in the same light, caught in each other’s eyes. And one more memory – a memory of another dream. So similar to his own death (he was sure, he was _sure_ , that he’d died with a noose around his neck) that it took him a moment to separate the sensations.

It had been choking, certainly. But… now that he thought about it, caught the edges of the dream and stitched them back together in his mind… he remembered something different.

He remembered water in his lungs. He remembered gurgling screams. He remembered a name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we move toward the finding of one Quynh :)


End file.
